Berk Phil
by Freya'sDaughter
Summary: Modern AU. On the advice of her old music school friend Fishlegs, cellist Astrid Hofferson travels all the way to Berk, North Dakota, to audition for the city's orchestra. She's not too enchanted by the place, until she meets the group's second bassoonist-slash-personnel manager...Rated a strong T for quarter-life angst, alcohol consumption and a decent number of cuss words.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I wrote this as a kind of fun catharsis. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any resemblance to actual professional orchestral audition procedure is, sadly, pretty accurate. Except the personnel managers usually aren't so easy on the eyes.**

**oooo**

I: Exposition

Astrid Hofferson steers her tiny rental car up to the curb. She presses on the brake pedal, and the car comes to a halt in a pile of wet April slush. She fumbles for the gear lever, puts the car in park. The digital clock on the dash says 7:45. Distrustful of smalltown cell service and wifi, she pulls out the map she's printed in advance and checks the cross street.

Yep, this is it.

She leans forward, squinting through the car's front windshield at the huge, rather decrepit-looking brick building on the opposite corner of the nearby intersection. Old-fashioned brass lettering glints in the early morning sun, spelling out _Berk Municipal Centre for the Arts. _The building matches the rest of the town: in need of an overhaul, an infusion of fresh money and fresh vision.

Berk, North Dakota is, by conservative estimate, a hundred miles from everywhere. The place doesn't even have a regional airport; she flew into Fargo yesterday, where she rented the car, and drove in last night and checked into a cheap hotel. Not that this place appears to have anything resembling an expensive hotel. How the town manages to sustain an orchestra that can pay its musicians the advertised salary, she can't imagine.

That said, she's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. This is her thirtieth professional audition; her fifteenth for an ensemble that pays anything close to a living wage. Orchestras are having financial difficulties all over the country. It's a noxious mixture of problems: out-of-touch management, a stagnant economy, dwindling support for the arts. And competition for the shrinking number of decent jobs is growing ever hotter. Expensive conservatories keep churning out qualified graduates with great chops but loads of debt. With six years' worth of college loans and a nineteenth-century French cello to pay off, Astrid can't afford to be picky about where she lives. She's twenty-eight years old. Most of her non-musician friends have long since graduated and gotten full-time jobs, and/or started popping out babies.

Like the majority of her graduating class at the D. Nadder School of Music, Astrid isn't married yet, nor does she plan to have kids any time soon. Hell, she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to afford to retire. Right now she barely has enough money to keep feeding her parrot, Stormfly. Never mind children, or a house, or any car made after 2010.

She hasn't had the time to date much, anyway; she's been spending the years post Master's degree practicing orchestral excerpts, flying from one audition to another, teaching lessons, freelancing with mediocre regional groups, and working as a barista. The point of all of it being to eventually win a job that gets her a decent apartment, good health insurance, and a simpler tax return. A job that lets her play the music she loves, without the stress of wondering whether she'll be able to afford her car's next scheduled oil change.

On the advice of one of her professional mentors back home, she's given herself until age thirty to keep living this way, from paycheck to paycheck. Some people take fifty auditions before winning The Job, she's been told; like that's supposed to make her feel optimistic. But she's running out of time, and she's running out of patience. If this audition doesn't take, she's going back to school for something else; exercise science, maybe. She likes working out. When she was ten, her mom made her choose between cello lessons and karate class. It was tough. Sometimes she wonders if she made the right decision.

She sighs and sticks the street map back in the heavy canvas bag she's packed full of audition day stuff. She checks through the contents one last time. There's the massive binder full of sheet music, that will be reorganized as soon as she finds out what she's supposed to play on the first round. There's the box of granola bars, some string cheese, and two bananas she bought last night at a convenience store around the corner from her hotel. Bananas are supposed to be good for calming nerves. She doesn't know if that's true—she feels jittery no matter what she does, short of swallowing a massive dose of beta blockers, but her friends swear by bananas. Anyhow, they've become part of the audition routine and she's not going to mess with it today. She made it to the finals last time, in Charlotte, so she's doing something right.

Granted, it's probably the six hours of daily practice she's been putting in, and the endless recording of herself on her phone's video camera, but the bananas aren't hurting anything as far as she can tell. Plus they're cheap and don't require a prescription.

In the bag is also a bottle of water. A pack of painkillers, in case she gets a sudden headache or the tendinitis in her back perversely decides to act up after a year of remission. A package of Kleenex. A comb. Sanitary napkins. A pair of black patent-leather flats that she'll change into in the green room, or in her dressing room, if she's lucky enough to get a private space to warm up before the audition. At about half the auditions so far, she's just been thrown into a big holding pen with ten other people, all of whom sounded better than she did.

At least they had at the time. She knows by now how much a person's playing can deteriorate on the long walk from the warmup room to the audition hall. Hence the obsessive practicing, and the bananas.

She sticks the rental car keys in her purse and exits the car. Pulling her cello from the back seat, she sends a silent prayer of thanks out into the universe that she and her instrument made it to Berk at all. The airline attendants at the connecting gate had nearly prevented her from boarding with it this time, even though she had bought an extra ticket (under the name "Cello Hofferson") and had printed out the airline policy that stated large instruments would be allowed in the cabin as long as they fit in the overhead or the owner had paid for an assigned seat.

She could check it in the hold, they'd suggested; her first pissed-off impulse was to bark "Are you kidding?" and laugh in their faces (she hadn't, of course, it might have jeopardized her position on the seating list). Astrid would rather travel in the cargo hold herself than allow her baby to be tossed around by baggage thugs who wouldn't know a priceless handmade cello from a twenty-dollar Walmart ukulele. She might refer to the instrument affectionately as her "axe," a term her previous teacher had coined for the thing due to its penetrating tone, but f-ck anybody else who thinks they can treat it like one.

Heck, the cello has more personality than most of the (admittedly few) guys she's dated. She avoids hooking up with other musicians. Half of them are just as poor as she is. The other half bat for the other team. Almost all of them are crazy.

Slinging the cello case onto her back and her audition bag over her shoulder, she crosses the street and walks around the side of the performing arts building. Interrupting the ancient brick wall is a huge, ugly metal door, slathered in an industrial shade of beige paint. The words "Stage Entrance" are stenciled over it in black. She hauls the door open, and a rush of warm, dry air hits her in the face.

_Great, _she thinks. Backstage will be hot; most likely the stage itself inside the hall will be cold. It'll throw her tuning out of whack and make her fingers stiffen up. But she's prepared for that. It's happened several times before, and the thought no longer throws her into a panic as it did the first time it occurred. Whatever conditions she faces will be shared by everyone else who plays today.

She walks through a maze of backstage hallways, past lockers and maintenance closets, following the taped-up signs that say "Berk Philharmonia Cello Auditions." She pushes past a set of double doors and enters a wide foyer. Near one of the walls there's a table set up, covered with paper printouts and copies of sheet music. Behind the table sits a tall, very hefty young man with scraggly blond hair and a red mark on the side of his neck that suggests he practices a lot. He's wearing a t-shirt with a sideways, bumpy alto clef screen-printed on it above the words "got cleffage?"

_Yep, that's Fishlegs_, thinks Astrid. Still fat, sexual orientation still ambiguous. Still fiercely loyal to his chosen instrument, and nerdy to the core.

Astrid has known Felix "Fishlegs" Ingerman since high school. They first met at a summer camp for young musicians. Fish was the viola player in the quartet Astrid had been assigned to. His theory-obsessed brain and her perfectionism fit together famously, and they've kept in touch ever since: sending notes of consolation via instant messenger after bad performances, congratulating each other on successful festival application recordings. They ended up attending the same school for their Master's degrees, and Fish won his job in the Berk Philharmonia a month after graduating. He's invited her to stay at his place for the audition, but she regretfully turned down the invite. It would have been too tempting to stay up until three a.m. watching stupid movies and drinking rum-and-cokes. If she wants to win this thing, she needs peace and quiet and blood free of intoxicants.

Astrid's here a bit early, and the foyer is empty except for the two of them. Her old friend is engrossed in a game on his smartphone, his broad, nail-bitten thumbs twitching nimbly across the screen.

She walks up to the table and clears her throat. Eyes still glued to his phone, he says, "Hello, can I help you?"

"It's me, asshole," she replies. His head jerks up in recognition.

"Astrid! Oh my god, it's you!" He jumps to his feet, comes around the table and envelops both Astrid and her cello in a monstrous bear hug. "Welcome to Berk! You look amazing, girl. How was the trip?"

"Fish. What the eff. This place is out in what my grandmother would call the sticks. I almost thought I'd driven past it on my way in from the airport. There's like nothing here. I feel like I'm in the middle of the Yukon."

"I know, right? It's crazy. Don't worry, though, there's great karaoke at the local bar on weekends. I'll take you there after your first concert with us this season."

"Shut up," she says, whacking him in the alto clef. "What are you trying to do, jinx me?"

"Nah, you're so awesome, there's nothing I could say that would mess you up at this point. Here, let me check you in before I forget." Fishlegs grabs a pen and writes an X next to Astrid's name on the printed list. "And here's the page with the list of excerpts for the first round. You can have this copy, there's one for every player."

"Thanks." Astrid takes the sheet, folds it over and sticks it in her bag. "I've been in email contact with the personnel manager—uh, Harvey Haddock?"

"Yep. He just called me, he says he's running a little late but he's on his way. He had some emergency with his pet chameleon. Had to take the thing to the vet."

_Oh, brother_, is the thought that goes through Astrid's mind. Typical audition day. You never know what kind of weird thing will go wrong. She makes a mental reminder to tell her mom about it during the obligatory post-audition phone call, after she's back at the hotel for the night.

"Can't wait to make his acquaintance," she says. "Harvey Haddock. Sounds like a name out of a 50's movie. How long has he been with the orchestra? Since before I was born, I bet. What is he, seventy?"

Fishlegs gives her a strange look. "Not exactly. He joined us three years ago, as our second bassoon, and then he took over as manager after Diane left for the Arkansas Phil. Anyway, don't knock him, he's awesome—he saved my ass, my first year here, by coming to get me when my car died on the way to a concert. Also he's funny. He's a total lightweight when it comes to beer, and his karaoke skills are hilariously sub-par."

_Sounds like a nice old dude_, Astrid thinks. _Bet he has some rich gossipy stories to tell. He's probably played in pickup orchestras for all the greats; he'll have seen so many Grammy winners walk onstage high or hungover with their pants unzipped._

Fishlegs checks his phone. "Okay, it's eight o'clock now, and your audition's supposed to happen sometime in the nine a.m. hour. I can take you to a practice room right away, and you can come back here at eight forty-five and we'll draw numbers to see who goes first. Sound good?"

"You bet," says Astrid. It's pretty standard audition procedure. Either you're assigned a specific time, or you're put in an audition block with four or five other players and the order is assigned at random.

It shouldn't really matter either way; you know your shit by now or you don't. You'll have a good day or you won't. You slept well, or you didn't.

She takes a deep breath, hikes the cello case further up her back and follows Fishlegs down the hall toward the practice rooms.

oooo

At eight-forty, she straps her instrument into the propped-open case and grabs her purse. She feels a little paranoid about leaving her stuff unattended in a practice room, but completely packing up everything and carrying it a hundred feet to the foyer just to draw a number out of a hat seems absurd. She closes the practice room door firmly behind her and traverses the ancient tiled hallway, dressed in her black concert pants, a loose satin top, and her yellow Converse sneakers. The audition panel won't see her in today's round, but these clothes (except for the sneakers, which she'll change out of) are what she's used to performing in.

Routine, routine, routine. Control what you can, let go of what you can't. That's the mantra.

Strains of familiar music drift through the doors of the other practice rooms as she walks by. She saw twenty names on the check-in list when she arrived, and they all will have practiced the same exact stuff. The only variation will be in which of the three listed cello concertos each applicant will have picked, in the hope of wowing the panel with their stunning technique and sensitive musicianship.

Some of the players sound like they know what they're doing; a couple of others probably should have saved themselves the trip. They'll be eliminated after the first excerpt, if they're lucky enough to get that far. If the panel is feeling indulgent, they'll listen to everything on the first round's list of pieces. It'll give the poor sap in the hot seat a feeling of anxious optimism, only to be crushed an hour later when that player isn't among the one or two people from their group that make it into tomorrow's semifinal.

If they pick anyone, that is. To satisfy union guidelines, applicants are shielded from view in the first rounds to avoid non-musical bias in the judging. But there's nothing in the bargaining agreement that mandates hourly quotas, or that prevents players from being left in the green room for hours to chew their knuckles and cycle desperately through their music playlists, only to be sent home at the end with a polite "Thank you for coming, but we're sorry to tell you..."

Astrid knows the sting of rejection well at this point. She typically deals with it by crying in her rental car for a few minutes, followed by treating herself to an expensive drink. And if there's time before her flight leaves, she goes to the local zoo if there is one.

She somehow doubts miniscule Berk, North Dakota, population "who-the-hell-is-funding-all-your-concerts-anyway," has anything resembling a zoo.

She pushes open the door to the foyer. Speaking of zoos, a bunch of cellists have clustered around a thin figure dressed in a sport coat and jeans who is standing by the table, holding a clipboard. She walks over, and the group opens to admit the newcomer. The guy with the clipboard looks up, eyebrows raised in greeting, and Astrid feels a weird _zap _go through her nervous system, like she's stuck her finger in a light socket.

Within a fraction of a second she's taken appraisal of his features. Thick shock of reddish-brown hair, choppily cut. Wide green eyes with dark lashes. High cheekbones; sharp but masculine jaw. Long straight nose, childishly turned up at the end. Thin, sensitive lips.

_Who the heck are you,_ is on the tip of her tongue, when she notices the nametag stuck to his lapel. It's one of the standard preprinted ones, that says "Hi, my name is—". In the blank is written _Harvey, _in black sharpie; it's been crossed out, and underneath is the word "Hiccup," in quotes.

_Shit_. Her old, crusty personnel manager isn't old and crusty, he's a pasty-skinned Millennial with freckles scattered across his nose and eyes the color of seafoam. And a bizarre nickname.

Hoping she hasn't been caught staring at his face, she glances downward quickly, and that's when she sees his feet. On his right foot, he's wearing a yellow Converse sneaker, just like hers. What an adorable coincidence. On the other—

Oh. Yikes. _That _must have hurt.

Unless he was born with it.

Without it. Ergh.

She's taken twenty-nine auditions, she has a Master's degree in violoncello, and she's practically memorized the book "The Inner Game of Tennis." But none of those things have prepared her for all of _this._

Hot blood is suffusing her face and she decides the clipboard is the safest place to plant her attention. Past the clipboard she can see the XKCD t-shirt he's wearing under the sport coat.

_No wonder Fishlegs likes this dude_, she thinks. They're like nerd kindred spirits.

Maybe five seconds have passed since their eyes first met, and she's aware that the guy is now looking at her curiously, one corner of his mouth quirking upward in vague amusement.

"You must be Astrid," he says. His voice is young-sounding, with a trace of adolescent squawk. She suddenly wonders how old he is, exactly. He's got good skin under all the freckles—he probably doesn't smoke or drink much. He could be anywhere between twenty and thirty.

She doesn't care. She's here to win a job, not to flirt with a cute, nerdy piece of man-meat. _Keep your head in the game, girl. _

"Yeah," she says. "Astrid Hofferson." Like her last name isn't on the clipboard next to her first name.

"You're in the nine o'clock hour, right? We're just about to draw numbers for the order. Ready?"

He reaches over to the table and picks up a baseball cap (Minnesota Twins—she wonders if it's his) with folded-up pieces of paper in it. Whichever one she draws will determine her place in line for the lions' den. He shakes the hat conspicuously, like anyone cares about achieving a true random distribution of numbers, and holds it out to the group.

Astrid pulls a paper from the hat and unfolds it. Number one. _No big deal_, she tells herself. She's practiced her ass off for this; she's played in every ordered place possible over dozens of auditions, and it's never seemed to make a difference. She'll get fifteen minutes for a final warmup. It's plenty. Then she'll go knock 'em dead behind that curtain.

"Who's on first?" quips Harvey/Hiccup/whatever his name is. The rest of the group looks at him blankly.

Oh, he's a jokester, is he?

"_I don't know," _she says, skipping to the punchline with the appropriately frustrated tone, and he grins at her for getting the reference.

_And_ he's got nice teeth.

_Damn it, Fishlegs, why didn't you warn me about this guy. If I lose this audition, I swear I will never forgive you._

_oooo_

**It's not over 'till the fat lady sings, as it were. To be continued...**


	2. Chapter 2

II. Development

The first round goes…all right. The concerto feels good. Her vibrato's a little fast today, her bow arm a little shakier than she'd like. Luckily that sort of thing usually isn't noticeable from more than a few feet away. She nails all the left-hand shifts, and gets the nice floaty sound she's been working on in the softer passages.

She's tried hard over the years to refine her tone, to caress the cello strings instead of attacking them with primal vigor. Her natural instincts are great for the gritty pieces produced by two world wars; less great for the playful, delicate stuff that often ends up on section audition rep lists. An orchestra audition is like a job interview: a rough, abrasive tone will get you eliminated. Nobody wants to be stand partners with a buzz saw.

She goes through all the excerpts feeling a bit detached, like a cello-playing robot programmed with a mild case of stage nerves. That's okay for now. It's more important to hit all the notes cleanly. She'll save most of the emotion for the final round, when she's already won approval for her technique and needs to show the panel she's (for lack of a better term) an artist.

After the last excerpt, a few seconds of silence. Then into the hall a voice rings out, clear and cold, its source hidden behind a stiff rectangular panel of fabric propped up in the audience seats.

"Thank you."

And that's it. Ten minutes on stage, and her active role in today's cello circus is over.

She says nothing in return. Players are not allowed to speak, except to whisper quietly to the manager or volunteer proctor with questions about the excerpt list. Talking out loud would destroy the anonymity created by the curtain, and by the carpet that's been rolled out on the stage (to hide the sound of a limp, or the "pock-pock-pock" of women's high-heeled pumps).

As much as she dislikes not being able to see her listeners, every time she looks at an audition curtain she reminds herself it's part of the reason female musicians started winning jobs in the first place. It pisses her off that it's still necessary, all these decades later, but things are getting better.

Perhaps—she hopes—her great-great-granddaughters won't need the curtain.

She quickly pushes her cello's endpin back inside the instrument and turns the screw that secures it. She lifts the corner of her chair and pulls out the thick canvas ribbon that the endpin was stuck into for stability; she rolls it up and sticks it in her purse. She stands up and closes her excerpt folder, clasps it under her arm.

All in all, not bad. It's a first round she would have felt ecstatic about, several years ago. Now, though, she considers this performance merely adequate.

She can still hear her college teacher's Scottish accent in her head, his voice firm as he addresses his new crop of freshmen cellists. _You have to be tough on yourselves! _

And he was right. Astrid had been the best string player in her high school. She'd won prizes and scholarships. People had come to her recitals and clapped really hard and her grandparents had given her flowers. Everyone had told her how talented she was. Jacqueline Du Pré, blonde English goddess of cello, reincarnated.

After her first couple of weeks at hyper-competitive D. Nadder, she'd seriously considered suing everyone back home for gross artistic ignorance and irresponsible ego-stroking. And then she'd given herself tendinitis, from trying to catch up with the older, better players. _You're too tense, _her PT had said, as she worked out a wad of hardened muscle in Astrid's shoulder. _Why do you squeeze so much when you play? Just relax. _

_…__Easy for you to say, _Astrid wanted to retort. _You're not spending eight hours a day sawing back and forth on thick metal-wound strings, terrified of failing your recital jury._

Belongings all in hand, she strides back along the carpet pathway, off the stage and toward the exit door.

"Nice job," Harvey/Hiccup whispers, as he opens it for her. She thanks him with a polite smile, but self-deprecatingly lifts her eyes to the ceiling to show that she's not too flattered. He's just being kind. The onstage helper always compliments you on the way out. It doesn't mean a damned thing as far as the committee's concerned. She's had days where she thought she'd sounded like Yo-Yo Ma on steroids, yet didn't advance; also days where she felt wretched and played worse than wretched and did well. Guessing the outcome is pointless. She'll know in about an hour how she's going to spend the rest of her trip.

As they retrace their steps through the backstage labyrinth, she yanks her eyes away once more from his prosthetic foot. She mentally slaps herself for staring like a five-year-old, and looks higher—only to find herself repeating the visual evasion process with his nicely-shaped butt.

_This is getting annoying_. Never in her life has she felt so glad that she tunes out the world when she plays, becoming oblivious to everything but the music. Just looking at this guy is making her feel strange, out of control.

And Astrid hates feeling out of control. Even as her eyes fixate on the way his hair just barely curls up in the back, she begins to feel upset with him for having this effect on her. It's all wrong. Guys don't make Astrid feel all fluttery and strange inside. It's always been the other way around. That's the way the universe works.

He's gay, she tells herself. He's too pretty to be into girls. Or he's taken. Maybe even married. She didn't see a ring, but it's not uncommon for instrumentalists not to wear them, since a wedding band can get in the way of playing.

They return to the foyer where Fishlegs is still sitting at the table, checking in the next crop of hopeful cellists. He looks up at her eagerly, and the red-headed guy leaves to collect the next candidate.

"How did it go?" he asks.

She shrugs in response, her arms still full of cello, purse, and excerpt binder. Apparently Fish didn't take enough auditions before scoring his job here. What does he expect her to do, start crying in front of all these people? Whoop loudly and pump her fist in triumph, like she did at age twelve when she won first chair at orchestra camp?

"It was all right," she says. "I'm gonna go pack up, then hang out—" she cranes her neck sideways to make sure she's identified the sign correctly, "—in the green room. I'm not going to bother you while you're working."

"Cool. Have fun in there. They just put in a cappuccino machine, and I stocked the tables with magazines. Knock yourself out."

"Okay. Thanks," Astrid says, and heads for the practice room where she left her cello case, audition bag, and sneakers.

oooo

A few minutes later, she feeds quarters into the machine and presses the button for hot chocolate. She'd prefer coffee, but she goes on a caffeine fast for a few weeks before every audition to avoid jitters and potential withdrawal headaches. Boiling hot water sputters into a cardboard cup, mixing with a parallel stream of sweet-smelling chocolate sludge. She pulls the finished mess of cocoa and chemicals out of the preparation slot and sits down in a vinyl-covered sofa chair.

Waiting for her drink to cool, she leans over and fans out a nearby pile of magazines for a better look. Like a true string dork, Fishlegs subscribes to a bunch of different publications; he's offered up a generous sample of his archives for the entertainment and edification of today's visitors.

Well-known performers and rising stars grin cheerfully up at her from glossy cover photos. _Isn't being a musician great, _they're all saying. _Buy and read this month's issue, and you might get to play at the Kennedy Center too!_

Layered over each image is an array of teaser sentences for the material inside. The magazine articles range from the down-home practical, to the very technical and scientific, to the downright backstabbing.

_Secrets to better intonation_, page 10. _Child prodigy X gives the inside scoop on her recent TED talk_, page 42. _Famous soloist and Grammy winner remembers long-ago encounter with older famous soloist_, page 35.

_10 ways to lose an audition before you've played a note._ Page 20.

Only ten? She's pretty sure she can come up with more.

_Are you sabotaging your career with poor practice habits? _Page 75.

Okay, that's enough of the magazines. She restacks everything neatly, crosses her legs and takes another sip of cocoa sludge. Fifteen minutes down, around forty-five to go.

Into the green room walks the cellist who played after Astrid. She dumps a worn backpack onto another chair, casually pops her knuckles and goes over to inspect the cappuccino machine.

_Might as well listen to the rep they didn't ask for today, _Astrid decides, and pulls her smartphone from her purse. She sticks an earbud into her ear and brings up the music playlist she's put together for this audition. Each short excerpt on the audition list comes from a much bigger piece, some of them up to an hour long. She's listened to each one multiple times already in preparation, beginning to end, with the full printed score. You have to know the rep like you know your own arms and legs. The people on the audition committee sure do, and they can tell who's done their homework and who hasn't. Some people might play too loud when their part is supposed to be accompanying another instrument's line. Or they might rip through a technical passage at twice the normal tempo, or linger self-indulgently in a place where you're supposed to be absolutely steady.

Even if the contestant can otherwise play the daylights out of their instrument, easily-avoided mistakes like those send a very bad message to the committee. And it's game over.

Slowly the room fills with cellists and cello cases. To pass the time, some of the players take out ipods or phones; some of them open up books. Others begin to talk to each other in cordial, friendly voices, comparing their perception of the stage acoustics, or trying to come up with names of people they both might know. Their friend lists nearly always converge at some point. Everybody's played for teacher P from Juilliard in a masterclass, or knows somebody who was inappropriately groped in a private lesson by famous concertmaster Q.

Astrid ignores them all. Unnecessary chatting with one's competition is an activity she considers best left to audition newbies and those with an excess of natural social energy. Instead she immerses herself in the playlist. After a little while she's lost track of time; her muscles tense up and relax in unconscious choreography as her eyes trace along the patterns of printed noteheads in her excerpt binder.

Someone next to her taps her on the shoulder and she looks up, startled. Harvey/Hiccup is standing in the doorway with his clipboard. He pulls a pen from behind his ear and clicks the end.

"First of all," he says, and clears his throat. "I'd like to thank each of you for coming this far to audition for the Berk Philharmonia. We really appreciate all your hard work, and everyone played really well."

_The standard polite bullshit, _she thinks. _Just drop the guillotine blade already._

"Unfortunately, only two people from this round made it through to tomorrow's semis. Uh…number four…Heather, right?"

A heavily made-up brunette smiles brightly and raises her hand. "Yes. Thanks!"

"Right." He makes a note on the clipboard and looks directly at Astrid. "And…number one."

She sighs: partly in relief, partly to steel herself for the next twenty-four hours' worth of mental hurdles. The first time she advanced, about thirteen auditions ago, she'd been out-of-her-mind jubilant, wanting to phone up everybody back home. But she won't do that today. It's better for her to stay calm—to avoid counting her chickens before they've hatched.

Each person whose name wasn't called collects his or her stuff and wanders out of the green room, wishing future good luck to their conversation partners with varying degrees of sincerity.

Astrid stands up and approaches—_"__Hiccup"? If that's what he really wants to be called, okay—_to get information about tomorrow. He smiles at her, and again her stomach does that weird squeeze.

"Congratulations, Astrid. You're all done for today. You can come back as early as nine tomorrow, and we'll draw numbers at nine-forty-five for the first semifinal round. Okay?"

"Great." Astrid shows him her teeth perfunctorily and turns to retrieve her cello and audition bag. She usually puts forth an effort to be cordial to personnel managers—even if you don't win the audition, it never hurts to have friends with hiring power. But this fellow is screwing with her mental mojo, and she wants to get away from him as soon as possible.

She tosses the cardboard cup with its lukewarm dregs of cocoa into a nearby trash bin. As she winds up her earbuds and puts away her phone, out of the corner of her eye she sees Number Four sauntering over toward Hiccup, hand outstretched, long synthetic eyelashes fluttering.

_Whatever. She can have him. I've got a date with the hotel gym. _

Out in the foyer, she waves at Fishlegs and approaches the table. "I made it!" she says, and he high-fives her.

"See! I was at least 92 percent sure you would. I didn't want to give you the number beforehand, though, in case you started worrying about that other 8 percent. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?"

"Go back to the hotel. Work out on their ancient treadmill. Watch horrible tv. Practice some more. What else is there?"

"There's a crappy movie theater on 2nd street, and a wall of historic graffiti on Sunset."

"'Kay. No zoo, I assume. Of course not."

Fishlegs' pale eyebrows go up. "Actually, there is! It's really small, and closes early, but we've got one. It's 15.7 miles north of town on Highway 42."

"Hunh," she says, a little nonplussed. "Never would have guessed. All right, I'm out of here, Fish...see you."

"Dinner?"

"I don't know. Text me later."

She hefts her cello case up onto her shoulders again and stalks out of the Berk Municipal Centre for the Arts, digging intently in her purse for the rental car keys. She doesn't look back even once.

oooo

**In case you were wondering, I'm one of the chatty ones. And I like makeup a lot. I watch youtube tutorials on it all the time. The only problem I have with Heather in HTTYD is that she exists. Heh. **

**Next up: Astrid breaks form and heads over to Fish's apartment for some evening R&amp;R. But she's in for a surprise when she arrives...**


End file.
